Archive for the ‘revolution’ tag
The Road to Revolution is Paved with Bread Not Tech.
When this stuff is pricey, dictators watch out.
And it always has been.
Napoleon’s famous adage that an Army marches on its stomach applies to something else he knew a little something about – popular revolt. Indeed, a brief scan of the French Revolution might be more than a little prescient as Egypt settles in for calamitous disappointment.
Simply put, the story goes like this.
While it was the gifted thinkers of the bourgeoisie in France that framed and drove the conflict with the monarchy, aristocracy, and clergy, it was the energizing of the mob that turned the slow and enlightened march to reform into an irresistible and uncontrollable surge, starting from the Siege of the Bastille in 1789. And what triggered the rage of the urban poor? Astronomical bread prices brought on by disastrous harvests and cynical price controls. For the Sans-Culottes on the streets of Paris spending 80% or more of one’s meager day wages on bread meant slow starvation. So a sheet of musket fire was hardly something to be feared. Read the rest of this entry »
Let’s Talk About “The System”
hi, i'm the system
Back in the eighties there was an awful lot of talk about the nefarious “system”, a deep and dark conspiracy of the powerful to keep down the powerless. Before resentment became a tool of the right, it was a clarion call of the unreconstructed left, a youthful, incoherent, but somehow meaningful rallying cry that drove many a drunken, sophomoric conversation. You don’t hear too much about “The System” these days. Nobody seemed to care anymore, when “The System” was delivering them flat screen TVs and great opportunities to flip condos.
But it seems to me that it’s time to revive talk about “The System” because it’s become very clear what it is.
Undiluted socialism for the rich and influential, and the legal and enforcement system to protect it. Read the rest of this entry »
